Family policies 'show inconsistencies with human rights commitments'

The report finds that although international conventions require the government to recognise the rights and needs of children and parents, the needs of different family members are not identical and often compete. This is reflected in inconsistencies between different areas of existing family policy.

The study, by Clem Henricson, Director of Research and Policy at the National Family and Parenting Institute, and Andrew Bainham, Reader in Law at Cambridge University, reviews the implications for child and family policy of the European Convention on Human Rights – incorporated into English law by the Human Rights Act 1988 – and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It also considers the potential impact of the Charter of Fundamental Rights under the proposed European Union Constitution. Looking at different areas of family policy, it finds:

• Poverty and social exclusion: International commitments require the Government to tackle poverty and social exclusion 'across the generations', but UK policy focuses on reducing child poverty. While this may well be justified, the authors argue that the government should specify clear principles for the level of resources invested in different age groups.
• Family support and child protection: The Government has invested in universal support for families, as well as child protection services for individuals, and a Children's Commissioner has recently been appointed. Despite these positive developments, policies are largely driven by concern for children's welfare, rather than their rights.
• Residence and contact: International obligations insist that children whose parents separate have the right to be heard when deciding residence and contact. Parents also have the right to enjoy the society of their children. However, children's welfare, rather than rights, is the paramount consideration under English law.
• Education: Rights conventions insist that parents should have a significant role in their child's education and that children should have a say over the direction of their education. However, parents' rights are dominant in UK education policy, with children afforded little say over choice of school, or issues such as sex and religious education, or discipline.
• Criminal responsibility: The age of criminal responsibility, set at 10 in England and Wales, is too low to comply with the UN Convention. Moreover, Parenting Orders, making parents responsible for controlling their children's behaviour up to the age of 16, take no account of teenagers' growing independence from their parents and breach the spirit, if not the letter, of the European Convention.

The authors urge the Government to review existing provisions with a view to designing a national family and child protection policy that reconciles current conflicts and gives explicit recognition to human rights – both children's and parents'.

Clem Henricson said: "At the moment, the way the human rights agenda is applied in policy is inconsistent. In some cases, children's welfare eclipses parents' rights; in others it is parents' rights that dominate. There is also no consistent overview of how the interests of different family members should be managed across the generations, and the way resources should be allocated between them.

"Integrating a rights approach into Government thinking and practice would help address such deficits. Rights provide a framework and point of reference for handling competing interests. They make individual and collective entitlements transparent and create an expectation that different interests will be balanced."